


About The Headcanon Of Survivor!House

by seroquel (smallredboy)



Category: House M.D.
Genre: A Disregard For Canon And Authorial Intent, Canonical Child Abuse, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Episode: s03e12 One Day One Room, Gen, Headcanon, Hypersexuality, Mental Health Issues, Meta, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 20:27:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18902047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallredboy/pseuds/seroquel
Summary: An essay about just why I read House as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.





	About The Headcanon Of Survivor!House

**On House’s Canonical Childhood**

We don’t have much in-depth discussion of House’s childhood in-show, but we do have a lot of facts, including House canonically being a survivor of child abuse, although not to the sexual extent I am a believer of and that I will expand on in later points.

What we know about House’s childhood:

  1. His father, being a military man, was deployed all over the world and House came with.
  2. His father denied him food and put him in ice baths as punishment.
  3. House and his father did not speak for a whole summer after House came to him in regards to his true paternity.
  4. His father was strict and emotionally neglectful (rather than directly stated, this is alluded to numerous times).



These facts are talked about in season 3 episode 7 Son of a Coma Guy, season 3 episode 12 One Day One Room and season 5 episode 4 Birthmarks. Season 2 episode 5 Daddy’s Boy doesn’t exactly expand on House’s canonical childhood, but it does put forward his avoidance of his parents quite nicely.

So, House having endured child abuse by his father is a fact in-show and there is enough material for torture porn/sad fic/what-have-you in those facts. So, why do I see him as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse so strongly? Well, I have a couple of reasons:

  1. I am survivor of this kind of abuse myself, and it makes me feel more connected to his character.
  2. There are quite a couple of clues given on the show that make me feel like it’s bordering on canon.



So I will be dissecting those in this essay.

**House’s Coping Mechanisms**

Of course, we are well-aware of House’s favorite coping mechanism— drug use. But what isn’t as examined in depth would be the fact he goes on and spends half of his paycheck in sex workers. Which could, obviously, be taken as the writers making a bigger show of how he’s a creep or such, but I have one another suggestion: hypersexuality (or sex addiction, as it is most widely known and often referred to as nymphomania and/or satyriasis).

Although not recognized as a separate disorder by any major organizations, it can be classified as a symptom of manic and hypomanic episodes in bipolar disorder, and can be defined as such: “a dysfunctional preoccupation with sexual fantasy, often in combination with the obsessive pursuit of casual or non-intimate sex; pornography; compulsive masturbation; romantic intensity and objectified partner sex for a period of at least six months.”

We all know House makes sexual comments all the time. We all are aware of the sexual comments he throws at Cuddy through the whole of canon. But I say, fuck canon, let’s focus on the parts that don’t make him seem like a complete predator. Namely, how he uses sex to distract himself.

 

> [There's a knock at the door. House finishes his drink (scotch or whiskey) and gets up. He hesitates a moment at the door before opening it. We see from the back that the person standing at the door has long black hair.]
> 
> Stranger at the door: I'm Paula.
> 
> House: Hey Paula.
> 
> [We now see Paula who is a beautiful young lady.]
> 
> Paula: How you doing? You work over at the college? Or are you full-time over at the--
> 
> House: I'm looking for a distraction. You don't need to talk to do that, do you?
> 
> [Paula smiles, shakes her head and walks in; House closes the door behind her.]

This is the ending scene of season 2 episode 12 Distractions, smackdab in the middle of the Stacy arc, and through the emotional barrage of that arc, we see something that is quickly inferred as House hiring sex workers to distract himself. From what, of course, depends on what point in canon we’re talking about— in this episode, it’s nothing but the disastrous relationship with Stacy he’s pulling at.

So, canonically, House uses sex as a coping mechanism— an unhealthy coping mechanism, nonetheless, but I digress. Most of House’s person is unhealthy.

Another one of House’s coping mechanisms is deflection. Throughout the show he has a tendency to turn conversations away from personal matters as soon as he can, as he is a “logical”, “emotionless” person. Of course, this can be brought up on a lot of different character analysis, but it does tend to be something a lot of survivors do, based on anecdotal evidence from yours truly.

We still have my main point, though— something of a sex addiction that is pervasive in his life, which is common both amongst mentally ill non-survivors and survivors.

**Season 3 Episode 12 One Day, One Room**

Yes, this episode has so much material I feel obligated to have an entire section dedicated to it.

In this episode, it is not the typical format of the show. Instead, there are three patients at the clinic House diagnoses with ease— one of them being Eve, a young woman who was raped and caught chlamydia and got pregnant during the assault. In it, we can see Eve and House forming an unlikely bond as House attempts to connect with her and learn what is just the right thing to say to a fellow survivor.

In this episode we have the first instance of House’s childhood being tackled head-on— by him lying to Eve about his abuser being his grandmother before admitting the truth; that it was his father, which causes her to finally tell her story to him.

 

> HOUSE: 'S not bad as what happened to you, I don't think. I don't know what happened to you. And given how lousy you're responding, I assumed it was worse than getting abused by your grandmother.
> 
> [Eve sits up.]
> 
> EVE: What did she do to you?
> 
> HOUSE: Parents travelled a lot, leaving me with her. She liked things the way she liked them. She believed in discipline. She was right, I suppose. I hardly ever screwed up when she was around. Too scared of... being forced to sleep in the yard or take a bath in ice. [beat] Your turn.
> 
> [...]
> 
> HOUSE: [softly] It was true.
> 
> EVE: What was?
> 
> HOUSE: Wasn't my grandmother, but it was true.
> 
> EVE: Who was it?
> 
> HOUSE: It's my dad.
> 
> [They sit quietly for a few seconds.]
> 
> EVE: I'd like to tell you what happened to me now.
> 
> HOUSE: I'd like to hear it.
> 
> EVE: It was a friend's birthday party…

And then we have this, set right before the second part of that quote:

And yes, we can take that to mean his canonical childhood, of course we can, but I raise the fact that Eve could’ve easily been implying that he went through something a lot more similar to her own story; having been sexually abused at some point in time. And I don’t like to analyze based on facial expressions, but House’s look makes it seem like she’s right on the nose about that.

And before the first part of the quote above, we have this:

 

> EVE: [sighs] Has anything terrible ever happened to you?
> 
> HOUSE: [looks at her] What do you want me to say?
> 
> EVE: You wanted this conversation. You wanted to talk about something that matters. [appealing] Talk.
> 
> [House says nothing.]

And afterward, House desperately seeks for an appropriate answer, and he’s not sure if his life has sucked or not, with Foreman downright telling him to “act like he’s healed”, and of course, again, we could take this to mean a lot of things, including House’s physical disability and his canonical childhood traumas, but I am taking it for my own beliefs— that he went through a similar flavor of the suffering Eve recently went through.

And then, in the ending scene, there is this:

 

> HOUSE: Everyone will tell you... that that's what we gotta make her do. We have to help her, right? Except we can't. We drag out her story. Tell each other that it'll help her heal. Feel real good about ourselves. But all we've done is make a girl cry.

Which I believe to be the most empathetic outlook House has had on a patient by far. He understands how talking about it doesn’t help everyone, which is a thing few non-survivors seem to understand.

There have been two patients that one can say with certainty that House truly connected with— the one in season 3 episode 4 Lines in the Sand, a nonverbal autistic boy (which is a whole other can of worms in regards to my headcanons), and the one in this episode. A rape victim.

We can reach a lot of conclusions from these facts (One Day One Room, his canonical childhood, his coping mechanisms), but I have long since made mine: House was a childhood sexual abuse survivor at the hands of his father. The when, the why, the how don’t quite matter— because, in my eyes, the effects of such trauma are palpable throughout the entirety of the show.

**Author's Note:**

> All transcripts of episodes are from [clinic-duty at LiveJournal](https://clinic-duty.livejournal.com/12225.html). The link takes you to the community's episode index.


End file.
